You don't get anywhere unless you've had a little bit of a complicated life.
I did some pretty bad things as a teenager. When I was 13, I took my friend's mom's car out for a joyride, and I actually managed to hit somebody else's car. No one was hurt, but needless to say, I didn't get behind the wheel again until I had my driver's license.
I do accents. Sometimes when I've had a few drinks, I speak in different accents all night long, and then at the end of an evening someone will say to me, 'Seriously, where are you from?'
Sometimes my family got me in the door. Somebody would say, 'Bruce Dern's daughter - sure I'd like to meet her.' It was a point of interest. But after five minutes of talking about my father, I still had to read for the part.
For a long time, I dressed like an idiot. In college, I had a fully shaved head with just two horns. Like, a coxcomb of hair that I would sculpt into two horns. I looked like a crazy person.
I had a serious boyfriend in high school, but we would take breaks in between. You shouldn't always have a boyfriend!
Nearly all of these Chinese girls that have had success have had coaching from foreign coaches.
There are machines that can get rid of your cellulite, so I want to do that. And my friend has just had a machine that has worked on her neck and tightened the elasticity of the skin. You just need a day off work afterwards, so I'm thinking, why not?
If I had learned more about business ahead of time, I would have been shaped into believing that it was only about finances and quality management.
I had gotten one of the first Korg synthesizers with 300 presets.
I did my English A level in England, and we studied Shakespeare. I had great, great high school teachers, and we parsed the text within an inch of its life.
I had a brilliant trip to Mexico with my friend Ellie during my gap year. We thought we were being really cool and going off the beaten track while all our friends went to Thailand and Australia. The first beachside bar we walked into - there were two girls from my sixth form in there.
A certain administration which I won't call by name took the arts out of the schools, and that left the brothers out on the street with nothing, so they went to the turntables and started rhyming. Then they had a way to express themselves, and that's the birth of hip-hop.
For it pleased God, after he had made all things by the word of his power, to create man after his own image.
Like every actress, I, too, had movies that got stuck, but I have learnt to always look at the best in every situation and to give my best to every situation.
The truth is - I found myself doing these huge action-adventure movies, and um, and which are cool man. And I really love doing them. And thankfully I haven't had too much dialogue, because if I had I would have really made a mess of it. You know what I mean?
I had big shoes to fill, but the way we have been playing has made the transition easy.
I became obsessed with making more and more tiny things. I think I was trying to find a way of compensating for my embarrassment at having learning difficulties: people had made me feel small so I wanted to show them how significant 'small' could be.
If human beings had genuine courage, they'd wear their costumes every day of the year, not just on Halloween.
I always had a larger view. I'm interested in real life - my family, my friends. I have tried never to define myself by my success, whatever that is. My happiness is way beyond roles and awards.
Everything has changed. When I was at school and was told I had better learn English, I said: What for? The English are a hell of a long way away!
I was never afraid of failure after that because, I think, coming that close to death you get kissed. With the years, the actual experience of course fades, but the flavor of it doesn't. I just had a real sense of what choice do I have but to live fully?
My childhood had its challenges, like everyone's. It imbued me with certain things and took away others. It made me very determined.
We always had Packards, until the war, when they stopped making them; then we had a Cadillac.
At one time if you were a black writer you had to be one of the best writers in the world to be published. You had to be great. Now you can be good. Mediocre. And that's good.
It was a mystery to me, how the tuning was, or the style seemed to come out of nowhere, it obviously had roots in America going way back, there was nothing like it for me I'd ever seen before.
They shaved a little piece of bone off my small toe. You see, you balance yourself a certain way and this toe had grown under the other ones. So he cut it loose, where I could balance myself and it makes me walk straight.
I had the conviction that lovemaking fools you. The overpowering emotions it induces make you think you're sharing the same feelings as the other person and that they're imagining the same as you.
The notion that we won the war against Iraq is like saying we won a war against Arizona. I mean, the fact of the matter is it's not that big of a country. Nobody, I don't think, had any notion that we would do anything but win it.
I was an idiot in terms of career-building, but I had a great time.
In 20 years I had sold more records for RCA than any artist except Elvis Presley.
That match was late evening and I had the experience of the electricity of the Centre Court because it was packed, a full house for the whole match. It had been a great year for me, first time there and I had the full taste of Wimbledon.
I had a very normal, very typical American childhood. My father worked for the government at the Pentagon and my mother was an educator, so we had a very average upbringing, but that's helped me in my writing because I'm writing about ordinary things.
When my mood was high, I seemed normal, even buoyant. I felt smarter. I had secrets. I could see God in a light bulb.
If I die tomorrow, I've done the two hardest things anybody can do in this life with the least amount of security - music and acting - and I've had success in both. I can't really complain. I try not to live my life that way.
I was 27, an unemployed actress living in a really crappy studio apartment. I had just moved to Los Angeles alone, away from my family. I had cervical and uterine cancer and I was told that I would never be able to carry a baby.
